He was there when Ballard took the call she had been expecting since leaving Bettany and Kirkwood with the murder book. It was Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds calling to inform her she had been suspended for insubordination until further notice. The lieutenant was formal and used a monotone in the delivery of the notice, but then he went off the record and expressed his disappointment in her in terms of what her actions meant to him.
“You made me look bad, Ballard,” he said. “You embarrassed me, running through the night on this — and I have to hear it first from West Bureau command? I hope they roll you out of the department for this. And I’ll be right here, waiting to help.”
He disconnected before hearing Ballard’s response.
“They tried to kill me,” she said into the dead phone.
She put the phone down on the blanket and gazed out to the blue-black sea. Insubordination was a firing offense. Suspended until further notice meant that the department had twenty days to reinstate her or take her to a Board of Rights hearing, which was essentially a trial, in which a guilty verdict could result in termination.
Ballard was not troubled by all of this. She had expected things to lead to this from the moment she had hidden Bonner’s burner phone in her junk drawer. That was when she had left the confines of acceptable police work.
She picked up the phone and called the one person she believed cared about any of this.
“Harry,” she said. “I’m out. Suspended.”
“Shit,” he said. “I guess we knew that was coming. How bad? CUBO?”
Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer was a lesser crime than insubordination. It was hopeful thinking on Bosch’s part.
“No. Insubordination. My lieutenant says they’re going to try to fire me. And he’s going to help.”
“Fuck him.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Probably just spend a couple days on the beach. Surf, play with my dog, think things through.”
“You have a new dog?”
“Just got him. We’re getting along real nice.”
“You want a new job to go with your new dog?”
“You mean with you? Sure.”
“Not much of a fallback but you would easily pass the background check.”
Ballard smiled.
“Thanks, Harry. Let’s see how things play out.”
“I’m here if you need me.”
“I know it.”
Ballard disconnected and put the phone down. She looked out at the sea, where the wind was kicking up whitecaps on the waves bringing in the tide.
37
Ballard turned off her phone Tuesday night, got into her sweats, and slept for ten hours on her living room couch, still not ready to return to the bedroom, where she had almost died. She woke up Wednesday in pain, her body sore from the struggle with Bonner as well as the uneven support provided by the couch. Pinto was curled up asleep at her feet.
She turned on her phone. Though suspended, she had not been removed from the department-wide alert system. She saw that she had gotten a text announcing that all divisions and units in the department were going on tactical alert again following civil disturbances in Washington, D.C., and expected protests locally. It meant the entire department would mobilize into twelve-hour shifts in order to put more officers out on the streets. By prior designation Ballard was on B shift, working 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. under the response plan.
She reached for the TV remote and put on CNN. Her screen immediately filled with the images of people, hordes of them, storming the U.S. Capitol. She flipped channels and it was on every network and cable news channel. The commentators were calling it an insurrection, an attempt to stop the certification of the presidential election two months before. Ballard watched in stunned silence for an hour without moving from the couch, before finally sending a text to Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds.
I assume I am still on the bench?
She did not have to wait long for a response.
Stay on the bench, Ballard. Do not come here.
She then thought of responding with a snarky comment about being accused of insurrection within the department but let it pass. She got up, slipped on shoes, and took Pinto out for his first walk in the neighborhood. She went up to Los Feliz Boulevard and back, the streets almost deserted. Pinto stayed close, never pulling the slack out of the leash. Lola had always pulled the line tight, charging forward, all seventy pounds of her. Ballard missed that.
After coming home and feeding Pinto some of the food from Wags and Walks, Ballard returned to the couch. For the next two hours, remote in hand, she flipped channels and watched the disturbing images of complete lawlessness, trying to comprehend how divisions in the country had grown so wide that people felt the need to storm the Capitol and try to change the results of an election in which 160 million people had voted.
Tired of watching and thinking about what she was seeing, she packed two energy bars for herself as well as some more food for the dog. In the garage, she put both her paddleboard and the mini onto the roof racks of the Defender. She was about to hop in, when a voice came from behind.
“You’re going surfing?”
She whipped around. It was the neighbor. Nate from 13.
“What?” Ballard asked.
“You’re going surfing?” Nate said. “The country’s falling apart, there are protests all over the place, and you’re going surfing. You’re a cop — shouldn’t you be... I don’t know... doing something?”
“The department is on twelve-hour shifts,” Ballard said. “If everybody went to work now, there’d be nobody to work at night.”
“Oh, okay.”
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“What the fuck are you doing, Nate? You people hate us. You hate the cops until the shit comes down and then you need us. Why don’t you go out there and do something?”
Ballard immediately regretted saying it. The frustrations of everything in her job and life had just misfired at the wrong person.
“You are paid to protect and serve,” Nate said. “I’m not.”
“Yeah, okay,” Ballard said. “That’s fine.”
“Is that a dog in there?”
He pointed through the window at Pinto.
“Yeah, that’s my dog,” Ballard said.
“You need HOA approval for that,” Nate said.
“I read the rules. I can have a dog under twenty pounds. He’s not even ten.”
“You still have to have approval.”
“Well, you’re the president, right? Are you telling me you don’t approve of me having a dog in an apartment where somehow a man was able to get around building security and break in and assault me?”
“No. I’m just saying there are rules. You have to submit a request and then get the approval.”
“Sure. I’ll do that, Nate.”
She left him there and got in the Defender. Pinto immediately jumped in her lap and licked her chin.
“It’s okay,” Ballard said. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
An hour later, she was paddling west along the Sunset break, the little dog out on the nose of the board, standing alert but shaking. It was a new experience for him.
The sun and salt air worked deeply on her muscles and eased the tension and pain. It was a good workout. She went ninety minutes — forty-five minutes toward Malibu and forty-five back. She was exhausted when she climbed into the tent she had pitched on the sand and took a nap, with Pinto sleeping on the blanket at her feet.